Daily struggles with dialysis > CABG > kidney transplant > fused right ankle > delayed tolerance program
No, stupid woman. It’s a public forum. If you get to ask stupid questions in public, then we get to comment on how you’re an idiot. Of all things to risk your life for… a pedicure. In the comments, she keeps throwing out the strawman of either going out now or staying home forever. No, you can also stay home a bit longer until medical professionals tell you otherwise. I imagine her name is Karen.
When I left to go to dialysis this morning, the tiny street in front of my house was packed with cars parked on both sides of the road. I live pretty close to Peters Canyon, which is still closed. The parking lot entrance is blocked off. However, people are here anyway. When the lot was open, we get some stray cars parking on my street because cheapskates did not want to pay $3 to park. Now everyone is parking on the street, to the point that some residents want the city to issue resident parking permits.
Also, no one getting out of their cars were wearing a mask. Stay home, you idiots!
In the four weeks that I’ve been stuck at home, I haven’t learned anything new. Even old stuff I’ve abandoned; I put both of my guitars and my bass back in their cases and haven’t touched them in months. This week, I decided that since my job has to do with software systems, I may as well learn something new while stuck at home. I purchased a Raspberry Pi 4 kit from Amazon for $99. I got the kit with 4GB of RAM.
Here is the actual computer board. It’s smaller than I thought it would be.
It took me about 15 minutes to put together. There were three tiny heat sinks to stick on a few of the IC’s. That took the longest time. I have it connected to an old Visio 720p TV via HDMI. Let see if I can get it to work.
Mainly I want to learn Python, plus maybe build a few hardware projects. My staff analyst took Python in school and has written a few cool tools. Me, I learned BASIC and Pascal in high school, and LISP and C++ in college. Need to learn a more modern language.
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System has been installed from the included SD card and the computer is connected to my router. It’s now updating the system. I think I’m going to do a keyboard/mouse swap with another computer so I can have wireless input devices on the Raspberry Pi computer. It looks weird with my huge Corsair gaming keyboard attached to it.
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System updated and everything is running. This website on Chromium on Raspberry Pi.
Now that it’s been three weeks since we were ordered to stay home, life is not that different for me. When I was on peritoneal dialysis, I had to be hooked up to the cycler for 10 hours each night. Since it took about an hour to connect and disconnect, and about an hour for the midday manual exchange, about half my time was spent on dialysis. Since I was working full-time and commuting, that took the other 12 hours. I wouldn’t have time for much else. Even when I on hemodialysis previously, I was tired all the time so I slept whenever I had free time.
With the current social distancing, it’s not so different. I just got my Google location summary for March and I only visited three places: home, work, and dialysis clinic. For April, it’s going to be just home and dialysis. Again, that’s not so different from my sad life prior to COVID-19. I read that even though dialysis keeps you alive, it’s not great. Your blood is still pretty toxic which means your body is not operating at 100%. Almost everything I read about kidney transplants is that patients fell much better right away. I hope I can get a transplant while I still have a life to enjoy.
Tired of eating the same food day after day, we decided to get some take-out for dinner yesterday. I called a local Italian restaurant but no one answered the phone. I then went online to DoorEash and ordered two pizzas from CPK (California Pizza Kitchen). I went there for lunch pretty often a very long time ago, but haven’t eaten there in years.
The website said delivery in about 55 minutes and since we’re in the middle of a pandemic, I okayed the suggested $7 tip. So the total was about $33 for pizza + tax + $3.50 for DoorDash + $7 tip = ~$46. I forgot how small the CPK pizza were somit wasn’t really worth it.
Also the driver was about 20 minutes late somthe pizzas were just slightly warm. Worst part, I put on the order to have the driver drop,off the food at the front door. However,maybe driver rangthe doorbell and waited for my dad to open the door, and handed the bag to him. That defeats the purpose of the delivery. I would have gone and picked itbupmif we needed to come in contact with strangers. Sigh.
YouTube video by 3Blue1Brown that simulates how various quarantine measures affect the infection curve.
He has several key takeaways but most importantly, we need to keep the measures in place until the virus is eradicated, otherwise we’ll just have a second wave of infections. I don’t like staying home but I’m more worried about getting sick at the dialysis clinic.
Here’s where I believe President Trump is an asshole. I didn’t vote for either him or Hillary during the 2016 elections. He’s so worried about his re-election that he is willing to tell lies about the pandemic in order to prop up stock prices. Basically trading lives for votes. More people are going to die if we go back to business as usual while the pandemic is ongoing. He should just shut the hell up and let Dr. Fauci talk.
Near the end of my dialysis session yesterday, I got a marketing email from Panini Kabab Grill. I used to order food from them quite often so they have my contact info from the app I downloaded. I would usually get the two kabab family dinner for the three of us at home. It’s very convenient since there is one in Santa Ana Main Place, which is only five minutes from my dialysis clinic. Like almost all restaurants in California now, they only do take-out and delivery as their dining room is closed due to COVID-19.
Basically the email was advertising them rolling back prices on two menu items: Charbroiled Chicken Shish Kabab and 4-Skewer Family Kabab Combo. I’ve been eating poorly again these past two weeks as we are stuck at home. My taste profile has changed since heart surgery so some of the items I used to like from my mom’s cooking now taste bad and some things even cause nausea and vomiting.
Panini kababs also taste slightly different from what I remembered but it’s still tasty so I bought two kabob plates for $10 each. I managed to eat one entire plate for lunch and it was good not to be hungry again. There’s no nutritional information on their website but MyFitnessPal has some basic info:
I’m actually worried about the sodium levels since you can’t really tell from the taste how salty food is.
I read on Reddit that people have been experiencing slower Internet speeds now that everyone is stuck at home. For me though, it appears my Internet speed has gone way up. I used to average about 30 Mbps for the longest time. I even bought a new cable modem last year since according to Cox, I’m supposed to be getting ~100 Mbps for my $80/month. I’ve just been too lazy to call them. I just ran Speedtest, and got this result:
It’s not just only this test. Running the Google speedtest gave me 162.2 Mbps download and Speakeasy speedtest shows 180.3 Mbps. I’m still paying the same monthly fee for the past several years so it must be something on the Internet provider’s side. I did notice a slow down several days ago. I think the Internet is slower in the evenings; I guess that’s when everyone is streaming video from Netflix or other services. I think I was only getting ~5 Mbps at that time.
When we moved into this house 10 years ago, I was hoping to get a fiber connection. At that time, the only fiber option was Verizon fios and they did not offer the service in my neighborhood. I then called Time Warner and they said they would have to dig up my front lawn. The only connection already in place was with Cox so I didn’t have a choice. I’ve been watching Google Fiber but they have not expanded here either. Cox is offering Gigablast for an additional $27/month which will increase my speed to 940 Mbps. I’ll need to check if my current cable modem and Wifi router can handle that. Despite what Trump says, looks like we’re going to be stuck at home for several more weeks or months.
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Just found out that I have Internet Preferred so I’m supposed to get 150 Mbps. I guess I’ve been shortchanged all this time. It also says it’s ideal for 7 devices. Ha ha! I have about 50 devices connected. Just counting TV and tablets, we have four Samsung smart TVs and five iPads. There is another service level called Internet Ultimate which gives you 300 Mbps. However, it’s the same price as Gigablast at 940 Mbps so I don’t know why it’s available. Probably Cox will raise the price of Gigablast later.
Just got an email from another employee witness that the hearing was postponed to May 6th, 2020. I’m glad I didn’t take the risk of going to the courtroom in person. Hopefully we can leave the house by early May.
Of course the District Attorney’s office has not called or email me back.
Since everyone is stuck at home, other than sleeping, I need to find something to pass the time. I’ve watched a lot of streaming videos and stuff I download. Last week, I watched the entire four seasons of Food Wars, a Japanese anime series about a cooking school. Also watched a lot of YouTube videos.
I’ave also been playing computer games. I bought Borderlands 3 recently, which was 72 GB and took over two days to download. It’s a FPS (first person shooter) and I’ve purchased all the titles in the series. Last night, after playing for about ah hours, I suddenly felt very nauseous. I would occasionally get dizzy when playing FPS but this was a lot worse. I ended vomiting up a bunch of stomach acid with bits of vegetables from dinner. Not sure if it was an one time thing or just something to get used to from now on.
My sister asked us over to her house to play Mahjong in this time of social distancing. We originally got the time confused and showed up to her house last night, only to come back 15 minutes later. This morning, my parents reconsidered and decided to stay home. I think they were worried that my nieces could pick up the virus (they’re 13 and 10), not show any symptoms, then pass it to them and me. All of us are at high-risk due to age or medical conditions.
So for an tire week, I only left the house to go to dialysis plus the short visit to my sister’s house in error. This week looks about the same. Sad.
With the stay-at-home orders by the state and county, Tesla Superchargers are pretty empty. I usually get out of church service around this time (11:00 am Sunday) and local Superchargers are typically full. Here’s the status from my phone app:
I’ve been keeping my car charged to 90% overnight in case there’s an emergency and the power gets cut. Otherwise I’d be down in Main Place Mall charging my car for free.
I’m supposed to show up at a Los Angeles County Courthouse as a witness for a criminal trial. It’s related to a fraud case at work. The case is still on the preliminary hearing phase after 18 months since it kept getting delayed. I’ve been to the courtroom several times just to have the case pushed out another month.
With all the COVID-19 related closures and stay-at-home orders, the court seems to be still open. Since this is a preliminary hearing, and 20 cases are heard each day, there’s easily over 100 people walking in and out of the courtroom. Since Monday, I’ve been calling the court and the District Attorney’s office trying to get some guidance on what to do but no one has called me back. I have several medical conditions that puts me in the high risk group: heart disease, diabetes, and dialysis. It’s going to be super risky for me to go and sit in the courtroom for several hours.
I told my boss about this in our staff meeting Wednesday and I received emails from several people in Legal. One of our corporate attorneys said that under no circumstance should I attend the hearing. It’s not worth the risk even thought I was issued a subpoena. I’m still a bit worried since getting arrested and thrown in jail is probably even more risky than going to the courtroom. Let’s hope that the judge can proceed with the case without me being there since I passed all the evidence to a detective a long time ago.
For our church small group meeting yesterday, we were told not to physically meet up but to use online meeting software. Initially we tried to use Google Hangouts but no one liked the screen layout. One of the members had a Zoom account so we switched to a Zoom meeting. There were 12 people on the call at one point and it went pretty smoothly.
Initially my church was still holding services but with both the OC and California orders to stay home, everything is now online. They’re streaming sermons on Sundays and most other gatherings are cancelled. My parents’ church is also dark and they’re having an online small group meeting later today as well. Weird seeing a bunch of senior citizens with their iPads attending a virtual meeting.
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I watched our Sunday Service online today. I thought the staff was still going to meet at church but the pastor gave a sermon from his house. Worship was one guy on a guitar. Overall, it was pretty short; the entire program only lasted an hour. Later, my small group leader said the sermon was pre-recorded earlier. At my parents’ church and my old church in the South Bay, even through they only have about a hundred people, they live broadcasted from the church.
Here it is. Orange County basically ordered everything shut down until March 31. I was thinking of going to work tomorrow for one day to use my desktop. I have a deliverable Friday that I doubt me any my one staff person will finish and going in to work may speed it up a bit. However, I managed to get my VPN and remote access to work so maybe I can stay home. My work is also in a different (Los Angeles) county so I wonder if the no work rule applies.
Of course there are many exceptions for essential activities. The dialysis clinic is still open so that for sure falls under essential. I don’t know if the cardiac rehab center is still open and whether I should still go and finish up, or wait two weeks. With all these social distancing orders, I’m pretty sure they’ve halted non-emergency procedures also. I think all of US society just got delayed for two weeks.
Here is a useful infographic from UCLA Health:
Life with chronic diseases 